‘You’ll be all right again—I know all about you now,’ said a voice near him that he knew to be young. Then his meeting with Doctor Hugh came back. He was too discouraged to joke about it yet, but he was able to perceive, after a little, that the interest of it was intense for his visitor. ‘Of course I can’t attend you professionally—you’ve got your own man, with whom I’ve talked and who’s excellent,’ Doctor Hugh went on. ‘But you must let me come to see you as a good friend. I’ve just looked in before going to bed. You’re doing beautifully, but it’s a good job I was with you on the cliff. I shall come in early to- morrow. I want to do something for you. I want to do everything. You’ve done a tremendous lot for me.’ The young man held his hand, hanging over him, and poor Dencombe, weakly aware of this living pressure, simply lay there and accepted his devotion. He couldn’t do anything less—he needed help too much.

The idea of the help he needed was very present to him that night, which he spent in a lucid stillness, an intensity of thought that constituted a reaction from his hours of stupor. He was lost, he was lost—he was lost if he couldn’t be saved. He was not afraid of suffering, of death; he was not even in love with life; but he had had a deep demonstration of desire. It came over him in the long, quiet hours that only with ‘The Middle Years’ had he taken his flight; only on that day, visited by soundless processions, had he recognized his kingdom. He had had a revelation of his range. What he dreaded was the idea that his reputation should stand on the unfinished. It was not with his past but with his future that it should properly be concerned. Illness and age rose before him like spectres with pitiless eyes; how was he to bribe such fates to give him the second chance? He had had the one chance that all men have—he had had the chance of life. He went to sleep again very late, and when he awoke Doctor Hugh was sitting by his head. There was already, by this time, something beautifully familiar in him.

‘Don’t think I’ve turned out your physician,’ he said; ‘I’m acting with his consent. He has been here and seen you. Somehow he seems to trust me. I told him how we happened to come together yesterday, and he recognizes that I’ve a peculiar right.’

Dencombe looked at him with a calculating earnestness. ‘How have you squared the Countess?’

The young man blushed a little, but he laughed. ‘Oh, never mind the Countess!’

‘You told me she was very exacting.’

Doctor Hugh was silent a moment. ‘So she is.’

‘And Miss Vernham’s an intrigante.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I know everything. One has to, to write decently!’

‘I think she’s mad,’ said limpid Doctor Hugh.

‘Well, don’t quarrel with the Countess—she’s a present help to you.’

‘I don’t quarrel,’ Doctor Hugh replied. ‘But I don’t get on with silly women.’ Presently he added: ‘You seem very much alone.’

‘That often happens at my age. I’ve outlived, I’ve lost by the way.’

Doctor Hugh hesitated; then surmounting a soft seruple: ‘Whom have you lost?’

‘Every one.’

‘Ah, no,’ the young man murmured, laying a hand on his arm.